6★ Casters#
Pramanix the Prerita#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S2M3 | S++ | S++ |
 | S3M3 | A+ | S- |
 | S1M3 | None | |
Pramanix the Prerita is an incredibly powerful Caster. Her high AoE DPS is the most obvious feature, but just as valuable is the control from her snow field (Talent 1). This is further enhanced by her S2, resulting in one of the best, if not the best AFK skills in the game. But don’t take that to mean she lacks in ceiling! Her AFK skill is so strong that it bucks that trend, but she also has an even higher DPS skill available in the uncommon cases her S2 isn’t enough. It ultimately makes Pramanix2 a strong M6 consideration, although her S2 is so dominant it’s not nearly as necessary as some other highly graded M6 units.
It’s a rare situation in this guide, but the mentioned AFK skill, her S2, is Pramanix2’s primary skill and should be her first Mastery regardless of the type of player you are. Typically, this guide encourages burst skills which tend to have a higher ceiling, but that isn’t the case here. After a relatively long (but worthwhile) wind-up, she can extend her snow field beyond her attack range. This will often result in the entire map being blanketed, doing consistent damage along with a significant snare to basically everyone. Even better, it can “freeze” the bluebox, preventing enemies from leaking until they can destroy it. This can seem like a gimmick at first, but proves to be a powerful additional layer of control, outright neutering some enemies entirely.
If there’s any knock against it in terms of priority, it would be that the Masteries are below average. Her DPS only improves by approximately 8%, which is well below average. However, since it is an infinite duration skill, that can still total up to a lot more damage over the course of the map, and because of this, the lesser gain is also somewhat typical. Along with the additional improvement to wind-up, it is still among the highest priority skills, but this could serve as a tie-breaker in an era when it seems like every new unit has an S++ skill. It’s notable that Mastery does NOT improve the stats of the frozen blue box, nor does her level. Only her elite level (E1/E2) affects that.
While her S2 is a strong skill, it is not completely without flaws, namely a very long wind-up time during which she has nothing but her basic default snow field. Which is still very strong and buys plenty of time for the wind-up. However, this does give some room for her S3 to be viable. Do not take this to mean her S3 is only useful as an alternative though. The DPS on it in an even wider area is remarkable, and even has some additional control and RES-ignore. While it isn’t as game-changing as her S2, it’s still a powerful DPS skill on one of the best Casters, and it happens to have some incredibly strong Masteries too. Since both the +ATK and damage dealt improve and multiply off of each other, Mastery results in a whopping 45% increase to DPS. In fact, at SL7, S3 barely edges out S2M3. That may leave you scratching your head if you watch early highlights or take her for an early spin, but at S3M3, it nearly doubles S2M3 instead, basically making Mastery mandatory if you plan to use it.
However, it is not just DPS that gives S3 its use. It’s not Mastery related as the snow formation speed does not improve over Mastery, but S3’s control is worth a brief discussion to understand its value as well. The enhanced Snow formation speed causes a hefty snare effect, and when combined with her large range and Lure effect, can be a surprising burst of control as well!
To clarify a bit of nuance here, the better Mastery gain on her S3 doesn’t mean you should start with it. While S2 has the worse gains, it is by far the better skill, and even the lower improvement will result in a significant performance improvement.
Last, creative players could consider her S1 as well, but it is much less special. It is unique in its push ability. Most Shifters are restricted to their relatively short range, often just a frontal tile or two, but Pramanix2 can shift anyone in her large (relative to other Shifters) Phalanx range. This results in some Shift shenanigans that only she can do. Unfortunately though, the Shift force does not improve over Mastery, so even that may not make Mastery itself worthwhile, although the skill itself does have some other use from time to time as well.
Mantra#
Mantra is a reasonably powerful Caster, who avoids some of the key issues that plague her fellow Primal Casters, although in an era of ever expanding powercreep, she ends up feeling a bit complex and situational for the output, particularly with how absurdly powerful her corresponding Ritualist is already. It hampers Mantra’s priority, although she is still more powerful than many legacy units and is more than usable if she catches your fancy.
Her skills form a fairly typical split of Primal Casters where her S3 does a ton of damage (enhanced by an applicator) while her S1 or S2 apply the Nervous Impairment herself. S3 is one of those mentioned areas she avoids the core Primal Caster issue because while Tragodia certainly enhances the effect, she is still effective on her own. This makes S3 her primary skill since it has the best outcomes in either case. While units like Nymph and Blaze2’s priorities depend on their corresponding applicator, Mantra’s S3 is her best skill regardless, nor does it change much in priority.
It’s one of those skills that can be a bit daunting to read, but what basically happens is every extra Paralysis stack over 2 becomes Elemental Damage that hits 2 targets. Other units can activate their skills to add 2 additional stacks. This can occur 3 times, but includes herself. This means 6 total Paralysis stacks, and thus 4 Elemental Damage bursts (5 if her Talent 2 is still in effect). Tragodia comes into play because although this works perfectly fine without him, his quick application of NI adds more stacks that aren’t constrained by the skill-activation cap, and he can trigger NI multiple times per S3 cycle. Of particular note, when an enemy dies, the remaining overflow Paralysis stacks are immediately converted, so large swarms can often result in big damage to the main targets, although the damage is still plentiful against fewer.
That out of the way, we can finally talk about her Masteries which also happen to be quite large, further making the choice easy. Both the ATK bonus and the “chain” damage are enhanced, which results in a significantly above average net gain since both gains multiply off of each other. The damage per chain improves by almost 60% from SL7 to S3M3! This makes Mantra’s Masteries especially important if you plan to use her, and give her a slightly higher grade than she might otherwise have.
However, the skill does have a flaw, especially if you don’t have Tragodia, which is that once you run out of Paralysis stacks, the skill does nothing beyond its basic (and unimpressive) Arts DPS. This can even make the 40 second uptime seem like a downside! This gives some room for her S2 to be a secondary consideration if you particularly like her, but most won’t want to bother even if you don’t have Tragodia. With it, she basically turns into a Chain Caster who is pretty effective at applying Nervous Impairment, even against moderate amounts of RES. Since NI has a lot of independent value, that can make it a more viable consideration compared to similar skills on other Primal Casters. However, it is a far cry from Tragodia’s skills, and is limited by her default range, not to mention does far less damage than her S3, so it’s a relatively fringe consideration. It is primarily a waifu-tier of skill, where you want to ensure you’re getting the most use out of Mantra instead of just bringing someone else.
It’s notable that S2 also has valuable Masteries, although the key benefit is easy to miss. There is an interval reduction at S2M3 which greatly increases the skill’s DPS. Oddly, the vocabulary in the skill doesn’t change over Mastery as it does with most other skills with interval reductions, but at S2M3 the reduction improves by another 0.1 seconds, a difference that can be seen on her PRTS.wiki profile.
Last is her S1, which may be worth a look for the true Mantra-simps. A vast majority of people shouldn’t consider it at all, but it does do a surprising amount of NI at a consistent pace. At maximum investment, she can trigger NI in two activations (approx 10 seconds), up to 39 RES, but it’s three activations if left at SL7, even against zero RES so Mastery is a must to actually use it. However, since it’s stuck on single target and S2 cycles so fast already, it’s very rare it will be the better skill.
Necrass#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S3M3 | Breakpoint - S3M1 | |
| S- | S- | ||
 | S1M3 | C | C |
Necrass is a powerful unit featuring a strong, free, and renewable summon and high damage. The combination makes her a potent story-carry type unit, allowing her to essentially solo a lot of content. However, she is also a unit with a relatively low ceiling compared to her contemporaries and she falters quite a bit in harder content. If her summon is stat-checked or melee tiles are limited, she has very little utility to make up for it, and her damage falls off quickly vs any enemy RES. This ultimately makes her a strong investment choice, but not an especially high priority one.
The skill to start with in all cases is her S3. While her other two skills do have some value, S3 has her most powerful summon, as well as an absurd 2400% damage multiplier (800% 3 times) on an extremely short cycle. It can be a bit intimidating to read, but there really isn’t much more to it than that. Summon a big chungus, do a lot of damage. The Mastery gains on it are unusually large too, likely due to the last minute buff HG gave her. The gain for both damage and uptime from SL7 to M3 is around 25%, so it’s a very important Mastery if you plan to use the zombie with any regularity.
Although it’s absolutely worth Mastering in full, there’s a special breakpoint at S3M1 that should be done ASAP. It gives the skill 3 activations instead of 2, which makes it one of, if not the most powerful breakpoints in the game.
For most players, a secondary Mastery isn’t too necessary since her S3 is so good, however her other skills are quite good too so if you want to go the extra mile with your Necrass usage, they can be worth considering. In such a case, S1 is by far her better secondary Mastery. Since the active effect refreshes all of her summons, she can trigger the large explosions at will on a super short cycle, while also giving her a way to refresh their health. This is basically a massive wave clear skill that can very easily run away in a chain reaction. It also has similarly valuable Mastery gains, again dropping huge amounts off of the cycle time while greatly improving the damage.
Last is her S2. It has good DPS with some Sleep utility, but ultimately is an extremely situational skill. It focuses more on specific targets than her other skills, but that’s not an especially good use case for her, so it’s the sort of skill where if she can’t do the task with her S1 or S3, it’s probably better left to a different unit. However, for Necrass maximalists, that situational value may be worthwhile, but even in that case, it has the weakest Mastery gains of her skills, so is best left as a desire-only type of skill.
Blaze the Igniting Spark#
* Note much of the value in Blaze2’s S3 is tied to having a good source of Burn application, such as Yu. Treat the overall priority lower if you do not have Yu (or similar future OP). See the rest of the writeup for more detail.
Blaze the Igniting Spark can be a tough unit when it comes to Masteries. Primal Casters are a fundamentally flawed archetype since they rely on someone else for their main value. Blaze falls further here since she lacks any particularly special alternative value like Nymph’s S2 has. That, plus relatively low Mastery value on her S2, makes for an overall low priority unit, particularly if you do not have Yu.
Regardless of if you have Yu, the skill to start with is her S3, although its overall priority will depend on if you have him or not. While using her S3, Blaze has no way of applying Burn herself and so it loses any special value. It’s still a decent DPS skill, so still tends to come out ahead of her other skills without him (plus you can usually borrow Yu from supports), but is a generic and low-powered skill with no Burn applicator. However, with Yu she can churn out pretty monstrous amounts of easy-to-setup pseduo-True Damage. It’s actually enough that she can have value in some end-game content despite requiring two units! Elemental Damage is very potent and her peak ceiling of it with Yu is actually quite high as shown in CCBP#4. It also has quite valuable Masteries, gaining 4 ammo, extra ATK, and extra Burn damage for a triple whammy of damage increase.
So why not value her S2 instead if you don’t have (or don’t want to use) Yu? Well, it’s mainly because her S2 has pretty poor Mastery gains on top of being somewhat unimpressive in practice. The big range and control are nice, but the damage is relatively low if she can’t apply Burn, which is the big problem that plagues Primal Casters. They inflict the element based on damage dealt (rather than ATK) so it falls off quickly in application against anything with even moderate amounts of RES. The long attack interval and the fact the burning tiles don’t persist just make for an overall weak skill. But the big problem as far as priority goes, is that it has really weak Mastery gains. The increase to her ATK isn’t nothing, so it may still be worth Mastery, but it also doesn’t make meaningful change to her ability to trigger Burn. The percent applied as Burn doesn’t improve over Mastery, and the math doesn’t work out for it to make a significant difference.
All in all, this tends to mean that even if you don’t have Yu, her S3 is still the better skill choice.
Finally is her S1. It’s a decent skill to have in the pocket, but you’ll probably want to pass on it for Mastery. Aside from being rather situational, it too has incredibly poor Mastery gains. It already has 100% uptime at SL7 and Mastery doesn’t affect the Burn damage, so the only benefit is a very minor ATK increase. The skill itself has some use, but it’s only worth Mastery to maximize big kot waifu.
Last, a small note for the people here looking for skill suggestions. Her S1 had an infamous bug associated with it where “on attack” effects of other operators would trigger via the burn field. You may come across this in highlight videos from time to time. However, the bug has since been fixed so it shouldn’t factor into your decisions.
Lappland the Decadenza#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S3M3 | S+ | S+ |
 | S1M3 | B | B- |
 | S2M3 | None | |
Global range is a very powerful mechanic, and Lappland the Decadenza raises the bar established by Goldenglow by piling on strong DPS, control, and manipulatable targeting. It all makes for one of the most powerful general purpose Casters in the game, and a very high priority investment option.
Lappland’s main skill is her S3 and it has some extremely valuable Masteries. Due to their drones and Trait scaling, Mech-Accord Casters have a high reliance on their ATK stat, so the ATK improvement alone would make this one of the top Mastery choices. But her gains go a step further, with a Fear extension at M1 (2->3 seconds), a double-dip damage gain at M2 (20% additional Arts damage), and strong control gain to the snare at M3 (40->50% move speed reduction). While Lappland herself isn’t quite an EX-caliber unit, the value of her Masteries places it among that tier in terms of priority.
Lappland’s S3 is by far her most impactful, however it does suffer from a rather long downtime compared to other contemporary high-tier units. This gives some space for her other skills to shine, and both are valid options with differing values.
While this guide tends to frown on AFK skills, her S1 is unique within that realm and worthy of consideration. No other AFK skill has global range like this and in fact, most lose their range in the process! The trade off is instead that it only targets enemies which are not moving. To clarify, this can be for any reason and the enemy does not have to just be “idling” along its path, so it includes enemies which are Bound or blocked, for example. As far as Masteries go, the main drawback here is the gains are rather small, at only a +12% ATK improvement across all three Mastery levels. That’s not a lot considering the relatively high costs, however given that it is always on and shared across three drones, it’s still a worthwhile consideration.
Finally is her S2. It’s her only skill without global range so it fills a role much more like a typical Caster skill. That’s far less special, however it is her highest DPS skill by a good margin with a more forgiving cycle (although notably, it doesn’t actually have much better net uptime). The gains are quite good on it as well, with an above average improvement to both ATK and uptime.
The balance of her S1 vs S2 makes for an interesting question on the better secondary Mastery, if any is done in the first place. S1 is the more useful skill, but is quite usable at SL7 already. S2 meanwhile is far less special, but has far more important Mastery gains when it comes to its effective use. There isn’t a clearcut answer here and it depends on the type of player you are and what you value, although this guide does ultimately favor the more useful secondary skill, S1.
Marcille#
Marcille is one of those units that’s a little tricky to evaluate. She does a lot, much of which is potentially valuable, but also isn’t overwhelmingly powerful in any of it.
Most players, story and advanced alike, will want to start with her S2. The description can be a little daunting. It is essentially an infinite duration skill, but if you activate it a second time, it becomes much more powerful. This makes Marcille one of the more powerful AFK Operators in the game. With S2, she attacks fast and hard, with a quick wind-up, with even some control to boot, and is one of extremely few AFK Arts-based options. She also gains quite a bit over Mastery since both phases get some DPS improvement, which results in a larger total gain than other recent comparables. Even though AFK skills tend to be pretty low ceiling (and that is indeed the case with Marcille) it will still tend to be her best use case, so her S2 should be the starting point for nearly all players… and probably the ending point too.
Most people will probably eye her S3 next, but it’s a flawed skill with some pretty poor Masteries. If allowed to chant twice, she’ll consume all of her Mana for one huge rapid-fire boom. Or it can be done activation-to-activation for more spread-out DPS with better control. It winds up pretty fast, so all of that does have use on occasion, but there are a number of problems. For one, she can only use the big burst once before she has to retreat thanks to the Mana mechanic, giving it one of the worst rotations in the game. For two, she has no RES-shred, so the damage falls off really fast against any target you’d actually want to burst. For three, it’s not as easy to use as you might think. She can actually Stun-lock the target outside of the damage range if not well timed, which can be tricky with her chanting! Perhaps worst though, at least as far as Masteries, is the net gain is below average. Mastery is only around a 13% improvement to the total damage vs 0 RES. Due to the Mana mechanic, nothing else improves except the Stun duration, which only matters if you’re using it in single activation uses which is fairly rare (just use S2).
This all ultimately makes a relatively poor investment. Many people will do it anyway, simply to maximize a collab 6★s flashy and supposedly signature skill, but it’s rarely the best choice. It’s not even that common that it’s a good choice! Although that said, it does occasionally creep into places where big bursts in a short window are necessary, such as some strategies for tackling high difficulty Crazelyseon, but those situations are rare and not for the faint of heart.
Advanced players may instead find her S1 to be the more appealing secondary skill. It is not an easy skill to use optimally, so most player won’t want to bother. However, it has some incredibly high HPS (like 3x most Medics high). It can also be abused for some higher DPS/HPS than it first appears using her skill cancelling as described here in the FAQ. Neither is an easy thing to master, but for those willing to try, it can have far more value than her S3 does. Though again, to emphasize, you’re almost certainly fine just sticking with just her S2 Masteries!
Nymph#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S2M3 | S- | S |
 | S3M3 | Breakpoint - S3M2 | |
| B * | B * | ||
* Note much of the value is Nymph’s S3 is tied to having a good source of Necrosis application, such as Virtuosa. Treat the priority lower if you do not have Virtuosa (or similar future OP). This does not apply to her S2. See the rest of the writeup for more detail.
As a Primal Caster, Nymph has a few unique considerations when it comes to skill decisions. They’re usually reliant on another operator to apply their required element which can be a big problem. Fortunately, Nymph’s best skill is also the one that has no reliance on another unit which makes the default consideration with her quite easy! Her S2 allows for strong damage thanks to her own strong Necrosis application, but is also a great control skill. Fear is a powerful form of control which requires its own coded immunities on enemies and it has a high uptime thanks to the forced movement. On a low-SP Charge-based Manual Activation skill like this, the results are a very powerful form of control.
Mastery is particularly important on her S2. While the Fear duration does not change, the reduced SP cost makes a big difference. Further, the damage difference is very significant. At SL7 she cannot trigger Necrosis against normal enemies in a single activation, but she can fairly easily at higher Mastery levels. At M3 she can be an effective source of Necrosis against even decent amounts of enemy RES!
Her S3 is much more unique when it comes to Mastery consideration. It is a very powerful skill that deals tons of pseudo-True Damage, which can be incredibly valuable, but essentially requires Virtuosa, a limited unit (or some lesser equivalent like Valarqvin) to function! If you do have such a unit, then Nymph’s S3 could be a decently high priority consideration. However, it’s also worth a quick note that the various Elemental types do not stack. This means the combo will not work well with units like Tragodia on the team, who is much more powerful.
As for Masteries on S3, something to note is it has a significant DPS increase at M2 thanks to the increased ASPD which only occurs at M2. M2 bumps her DPS by 16% compared to 10.5% at M1 and 7% at M3. That’s notable, but don’t take it as a suggestion to stop at M2. The gains at M3 are still significant, if a bit less valuable for the resources.
Finally, although it’s common to think her S3 has no value without Virtuosa, that isn’t entirely true. While much weaker, it’s still a fairly respectable DPS skill on its own merits. It may still be worth Mastery regardless of Virtuosa! However, while a decent DPS skill, it is somewhat unremarkable without the Elemental Damage aspect, so should still be treated as a luxury investment with the focus on her S2 instead.
Logos#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S3M3 | Breakpoint - S3M1 | |
| S++ | S++ | ||
 | S1M3 | A+ | A |
 | S2M3 | None | C+ |
Logos is, as of this writing, the best Caster in the game which is quite remarkable since a whopping seven 6★ Casters have come out between his release and this writing! His burst damage is already insane at base, but then he has not one, but two great Modules that give him even more ceiling and flexibility. If that weren’t enough, he gets a high quality AFK skill too. It all makes Logos one of the highest priority investments available.
While the nuance of his Module selection is beyond the scope of this guide (he’d be the longest write-up here if we dove into it at length), they still need some discussion prior to Mastery. He has two which are both very powerful but in different ways. CCR-Δ gives him Necrosis with tons of extra damage, while CCR-Y supercharges his cycle. There isn’t a clear winner between them, and the decision between them largely depends on playstyle and current roster. Relevant to this guide, while Logos’s Masteries are extremely powerful, CCR-Δ is actually a bigger upgrade than his Masteries. So if you think Δ is to be your choice, prioritize that first. If you think Y is to be your choice, prioritize S3M3 first instead. In either case, one of his Modules should be considered a high priority upgrade in addition to S3M3!
Anyway, moving onto the Masteries, start with his S3 which is by far his best skill. It’s a pretty straightforward one (if you ignore the projectile part anyway, which has no effect on Masteries), dealing massive damage to multiple targets in a wide area. Logos gains an above average amount of ATK over Mastery and it’s his skill that works best with his insane Modules, ultimately making it one of the most valuable Masteries in the game. Make note of an M1 breakpoint here which adds a fourth target. Grab it ASAP.
Next up comes his S1 which is a pretty crazy and fun AFK skill. Again, he has very strong Mastery gains here, gaining both a large amount of passive ATK as well as greatly improving the insta-kill threshold. A word of warning though. There are some players that may be tempted to value his S1 over his S3, but this isn’t a wise investment path. While the insta-kill is very cool, it is somewhat more situational. Even at S1M3, the threshold is only 1.5 attacks so the value mainly comes in against high RES, swarms, or places his ATK can be buffed. That is great and absolutely worth Mastery, but his S3 is the skill that makes Logos special. Don’t be afraid of the burst skill just because of the fancy insta-kill!
Rounding things out is his S2. Again, he has quite good gains here, however his S2 is much more situational than his other skills. Of particular note is the 20 RES improvement between SL7 and M3. Because RES is % based, this is a huge jump in effective HP and can give Logos some tanking presence few other ranged units have. That said, his S2 does bring up the rear in priority on what is already an extremely expensive unit. Logos is an insane unit, so the full M9 is something to consider, but because he’s so insane, in most cases his S3 is more than sufficient burst while bringing much more overall benefit. Compared to his other skills, S2’s Mastery is much more situational.
Ho’olheyak#
* Note that Ho’olheyak has a specialized IS Module, however it is not a good one and so does not warrant special consideration. The exclusion of IS-specific grades here is not a mistake.
Despite her popularity, Ho’olheyak is a pretty bad 6★. That’s pretty surprising in hindsight when you consider the caliber of units released around her. Of course, she wasn’t the only dud, but her fellow basement dwellers got various buffs and help. Yet for whatever reason, any help given to Ho’olheyak has also been undertuned, resulting in the lowest priority gacha 6★s from the last few years. Her damage is bad, her cycle is bad, her control is mediocre, and worse, she doesn’t even feel good to use (how are those tornados not AoE?)!
Her main skill, and the only one vaguely worth Mastery consideration, is her S3, however even then it has pretty poor gains, further rubbing some salt into the wounds. It’s her highlight skill, sending waves of tornadoes out from her along her direction, causing some damage and a Levitate effect. However, the problems are numerous. Neither effect is all that great, the cycle is extremely long, and the tornados have a lengthy travel time which makes them unpredictable. As mentioned the gains are fairly poor too. The control improvement is only a couple fractions of a second, the damage improvement is small (and isn’t very good anyway), and the improvement to her SP cost is minimal. The fact it’s her best skill still despite all those downsides is a testament to Ho’olheyak’s problems.
That said, if you’re really dedicated to using the snake-bird, both of her other skills are usable.
Her S1 is her more unique use case that’s also more likely to be useful on occasion. When combined with the CCR-Y base effect, she can reach a high-uptime stall against some elites (supposing they’re less than Weight 4) which can be fairly nice. Mastery is required for that function too since it both reduces her SP cost and increases the Levitate duration by a significant amount. However, that’s a very situational thing and it will often just be fairly anemic for the costs instead.
Last for skills, her S2 might be an option in cases where her S3’s cycle is a problem. It’s her higher DPS skill too, however the uptime is still really bad on top of two layers of some frustratingly low-odds RNG. It can in theory be better than her other two skills, but it’s an expensive and frustrating skill, and you should probably just bring someone else instead.
Finally, Ho’olheyak got a mode specific Module, but unlike most of them, it isn’t good enough to change her evaluation. The main perks of it reward bad play which can be avoided by simply taking someone stronger in the first place. While it does slightly enhance her general combat ability by making her tornadoes actually AoE (like they always should have been), it’s not enough to actually make her viable. So even with her ISW-α Module, Ho’olheyak remains a desire only or niche unit.
Lin#
* Note that Lin’s S3 is graded assuming she has her PLX-X Module at level 2. If you do not plan to get this Module to that level, treat the priority of this skill significantly lower.
Lin somewhat exemplifies the issues with the older Phalanx Casters. When she can take advantage of her niche of what is effectively invulnerability to all but the highest enemy DPH via her Talent 1 and enhanced by the PLX-X base Module, she’s unbeatably strong. When she can’t, she’s mostly just relatively weak DPS (by modern 6★ standards). That has made Lin’s evaluation a little bit tricky at times, since her value was content dependent. However, in the modern meta of powercreep, that role is now pretty minimal so Lin is a lot lower in priority than she used to be, even when the content is in her favor.
Further, Lin is also one of the rare units with a Module more valuable than Masteries. She was quite weak on release, and she was lucky enough to be one of the few to get a Module which actually addressed some of her shortcomings. Her PLX-X Module does three important things. It increases all important bulk, it allows her to retain that bulk on-skill (actually higher when using S3), and it greatly enhances her otherwise pretty bad cycle time. These are all significantly stronger improvements than anything her Masteries provide, so while her Masteries are still important to using her, begin with her PLX-X Module up to at least mod2.
After that, her only skill worth Mastery is S3. There’s two main reasons for this. First, it has better damage than either of her other skills, and second, the barrier enhancement effect when combined with the PLX-X effect actually gives her more bulk than off-skill! However, as noted the value of Mastery isn’t as important and mainly improves her damage, which isn’t her main selling point. There is a barrier improvement at S3M3 as well, which can matter in maximized use, but to the original point about her Module, it’s only a 100 improvement to her threshold. This is in comparison to her PLX-X base effect which is a whopping 380 improvement vs Physical damage.
The major flaw with her S3 pre-Module was its cycle time. This originally gave room for her other skills to shine, but again her PLX-X Module addressed this flaw, so there is really no reason to consider a secondary Mastery with Lin. Her S1 was the old preference since it could be toggled to quickly swap back to her bulk when needed without waiting the long SP cost to recharge on S3. However, with PLX-X her S3 is now better on skill with a better cycle so there’s really no need for that and S1 otherwise has much worse damage. Her S2 meanwhile is mostly just a gimmick. It shares her shield, but only at the unenhanced rate which isn’t particularly valuable. Otherwise, it’s just worse damage than her S3.
Ebenholz#
If you like blasting tough enemies with a single massive hit to the face, Ebenholz is the Caster for you. He takes the Mystic Caster blueprint of storing up charges and enhances it with some targeting priority that keeps those big blasts where you want them. However, while he can be a fun and satisfying unit to use, he’s also a bit flawed. He has no ability to get past enemy RES which is often pretty high on the very targets you’d want to use him again. He is also much less impressive once those charges are spent, meaning a lot of times he’ll do a big hit of only mildly impressive damage, then not do much of anything else. Plus by modern standards, his big blast isn’t even all that impressive anymore when it does work well. It all leaves Ebenholz as a desire-only tier of 6★, albeit a decent one that’s still quite fun to use.
His main skill is his S3 which, to no surprise, is the one that works best with the whole blasting gimmick. The targeting priority ensures he only sends the charges on important targets, while the ATK buff improves the damage. The ASPD is easy to overlook, but is actually quite important since the idea is you activate it before the target comes into range, allowing him to rapidly build the charges. That, along with the manual deactivation, allows for maximizing damage. The total damage gain over Mastery is pretty good too, so is definitely the place to start with him.
His secondary skill is his S2, however it’s only really used if you want to maximize your Ebenholz use to give him some value beyond his blast (you should probably consider a Module instead, such as his MSC-Δ instead). It’s a rather unusual skill that’s quite tile hungry and can be a bit gimmicky at times, but is also a skill that can have nice general damage at times. Basically every time the skill cycles, which happens automatically on a short SP cost, he spends his charges on a “mine” instead of direct damage. When built up, the resulting field can rocket enemies around for some pretty good total damage! Mastery on it is pretty good too, although not exactly vital on a secondary gimmick skill. Still, it’s a solid damage increase which can definitely matter if you’re trying to get the most out of him.
Pass on his S1. All Mystic Casters have a skill similar to this, and it is theoretically a way for him to build charges on a rapid cycle. As the higher rarity, his is actually slightly better too, with an interval reduction breakpoint at S1M1. However, in practice these skills are hard to use to any meaningful effect since they often require awkward positioning to make work. Plus in Ebenholz’s case, even in the best of circumstances, it will usually underperform his better skills.
Goldenglow#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S3M3 | Breakpoint - S3M1 | |
| S | S | ||
Goldenglow is one of the longer lasting old units, and for good reason. While she’s never been the highest DPS Caster, her global range and solid RES-ignore has seen her value hold fairly steady. Even with direct competition now, it’s a role often useful in multiples, not to mention that competition (as of this writing) is a limited unit. It means Goldenglow has held some decent priority for a unit her age, and should continue to do so for quite a while still, albeit declining slightly.
If anything, the powercreep of the modern metagame has made the priority decision with Goldenglow quite easy. Her global range is on her S3, which makes it her primary. If you don’t have Lappland the Decadenza, it’s a pretty high priority skill since that value is quite rare. And if you do have Lapp2, it’s still a reasonable consideration! Meanwhile that powercreep means her secondary skills are desire-only these days. They’ve always been on the weaker side for different reasons, but now look even worse in comparison.
As said, her S3 is her only skill worth Mastery in the modern meta outside of waifu-purposes. The main value is in the increased ATK, which is a solid improvement given how the Mech-Accord archetype works. Interestingly, while her SP cost does improve by a notable amount, it’s all loaded into her S3M1 which drops the cost by 5 SP, with no further improvement after. That’s notable, since it gives a lot of value to doing her S3M1 immediately, but don’t take that to mean you should stop there. The ATK improvement at M2 and M3 are the more important parts of Mastery with Goldenglow.
Her S2 has had some value as a secondary Mastery in the past, but that is no longer true. While her S3 has always been her bread and butter, AFK Caster skills like this were rare and it was useful in some content. However, those days are long past, and in the modern game there’s really no value in it. The DPS is worse than her S3 and the wind-up time is really long. Even for waifu play, there’s not many places her S2 would be the better choice.
Last, her S1 is notable as a bit of trivia. For a long time, it was the highest DPS Caster skill, however even then it wasn’t worth considering. Her global range S3 just has too much value, and that bit of trivia isn’t even true anymore. A true maximalist may get some occasional use out of it, but for a vast majority of players, there’s simply no good reason to use anything but her S3 anymore.
Carnelian#
Carnelian is one of the worst aged units in the game. Even when she was brand new, her value was questionable. While Beeswax and Mint had some value in lower rarity niches, that wasn’t something more meta high-rarity clears really needed, and Carnelian didn’t even have enough bulk to make a difference in cases where it might. Then she got powercrept by Lin less than a year and a half later, then again by Pramanix2. It all makes for one of the lowest priority 6★s, who is still pretty bad even if you lack her betters! Carnelian is very much a desire-only promotion and, unfortunately, has pretty much always been that way.
If you want to raise her anyway, her S3 is her primary skill which does by far the most damage. The Mastery gains on it are a bit odd as, aside from a token amount of initial SP, only ATK improves. But it’s a really big amount of ATK! That can easily justify the investment, and when wound-up, her DPS actually isn’t that bad. However, it is a flawed skill. Both the wind-up and cycle time (thanks to the Charged effect) are really bad, which ultimately hinders the skill.
Since her S3 is quite flawed, it leaves a lot of room for her S2 to be viable instead. She doesn’t quite attack fast enough to get a 100% uptime control, but it’s still pretty good uptime. At S2M3 her interval is 0.9 seconds for a 0.6 second Bind. It’s not great, but could definitely be worse, and can even be more appealing than her S3 which only does relatively poor DPS by modern standards. Mastery on her S2 is quite valuable too. There is a large interval reduction of an additional -0.3 seconds at S2M3, which is huge. For whatever reason, older units with interval reduction tended to have outsized gains over Mastery. Then she gains uptime to her control too, which along with the interval reduction, makes a night and day difference in her uptime.
Pass on her S1. It allows her to retain her defensive bulk, but the DPS is way way worse. If her bulk is needed, it’s better to just not attack in the first place, and doesn’t help against Arts either. Especially with very strong competition for range tanks these days, there’s just no real value in that.
Passenger#
Passenger is one of those novel history notes in the game. He was awful on release, but got a couple of buffs and was one of the earliest benefactors of the Module system. Plus his skills were abusable with the Chain Caster Hand relic in IS early on (more on this later), so for a while he actually had some decent value. However, even at the time his ceiling was never very high, and thanks to modern powercreep, he has largely faded to the background. These days, Passenger is functional enough if you want to use him, but not a strongly recommended investment, nor does he have a lot of niche value either.
His main skill is his S3. It has a strong and rapid burst of Arts damage on a big range, which, along with charges, gives it some passable general value for DPS. However, it has an atrocious uptime thanks to a relatively long 30 SP cost compared to the 4 second burst window. Even when he was new, it was a poor rotation, and has only aged worse. However, it’s still his best use case and Mastery on it is reasonably valuable too.
That mentioned Chain Caster Hand relic in IS is what he used to be known for. Since his S3 stores charges and the lightning storm lingers after activation, the extra SP from the Hand relic immediately recharges the skill, allowing for effectively spamming lightning storms. That’s been his claim to fame over the years, even getting him loving nicknames like Godhand. However, that’s mostly dated. Not all iterations of IS have the Hand relic. Even in IS#5 where it can be guaranteed via the Lamp of Wishes, he’s not a strong starter and it dilutes the pool when there are better options that don’t have that reliance on a specific relic. These days, it’s mostly a gimmick or a historical footnote, rather than a real strategy.
If you like Passenger to the point you want to make regular use out of him, consider his S2 for Mastery as well. It’s a more typical Chain Caster type skill, which can give it some value in cases where his S3’s poor cycle is troublesome. It has a valuable interval reduction at S2M3 as well which is a significant increase. However, the overall DPS of the skill is quite low, especially by modern standards, so it’s not a general consideration.
Pass on his S1 which just has no special value. Even with the longer Slow, it’s still very poor uptime control with bad damage.
Dusk#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced | IS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | S3M3 | C- | C | -- * |
 | S1M3 | Breakpoint - S1M1 | ||
| C | C- | -- * | ||
* Note that Dusk has a specialized IS Module, however it is not a good one and so does not warrant special consideration. The exclusion of IS-specific grades here is not a mistake.
Oh boy. Poor Dusk. No Caster has had a rougher go of it. She was bad even on her release when there weren’t a lot of options. Splash Casters have always been a weak archetype, and Dusk brought all of the worst parts of it, while being worse than a launch Core Caster who was also cheaper to deploy. The situation has only gotten worse and worse with every new unit too, and even an ISW-α module couldn’t save her. For whatever reason, she got by far the weakest one to date! Dusk is just bad all around with no upside. The only reason to use her these days is either because you want to, or as a tagalong for Shu’s Sui Talent. But the latter doesn’t even require raising her! So the main investment advice with Dusk is… don’t.
If you want to raise her anyway, all of her skills are potential options, although they are all flawed in their own way. The main decision comes down to her S1 vs S3, or “every day” vs “unique”.
Her S1 is the “every day” skill. It’s fairly simple, a Charge-based short-cooldown skill that expands her splash radius and damage. It has valuable Masteries too. There’s a very notable additional charge at S1M1, and an SP reduction at S1M3, both of which are extremely important. However, the skill is inferior to many common options. It wasn’t even close to the best version of this sort of skill at the time let alone now! So while it tends to be her best skill for regular use, it’s definitely a luxury investment. Even if you lack those better options, given how expensive 6★s are and how easy she is to replace, there isn’t a lot of meta justification behind it.
Meanwhile, her S3 is the “unique” one. It has pretty poor DPS and an absolutely horrific cycle. Mercifully, these types of things are a thing of the past, but 100 SP hurts to even type, let alone use. Her SPC-Y Module addresses this cost a little bit, but an expensive Module just to make a skill less terrible (it still isn’t good) isn’t a good investment. However, while it has some very severe downsides, it does consistently summon her Freelings which can allow for some decent control at times.
Bringing up the rear is her S2. It’s a more classic Splash Caster type skill, but that’s not a good thing since the Splash Casters were historically terrible. It has low damage and cycles poorly, albeit not as badly as her S3. So while it’s a usable skill, it’s rare that it’s better than her other two. It’s an extremely fringe skill on an already not recommended unit.
Last, her ISW-α Module is worth a brief discussion to avoid some confusion, although such things tend to be outside of the scope of this guide. While most other units with an ISW-α Module have special value and IS-grades to reflect their value, Dusk’s ISW-α Module is notably bad. Her Freelings are too fragile to be useful in IS, and it’s missing a lot of her “fixes” from her SPC-Y Module such as reduced DP cost and cycling. So her ISW-α makes no difference on Dusk’s priority, and she isn’t a unit you should promote in any case if you don’t know what you’re doing already.
Ceobe#
* Note that Ceobe’s S2 is graded assuming she has her CCR-X Module at level 3. If you do not plan to get this Module fully upgraded, treat the priority of this skill significantly lower.
Ceobe is a unit who may be forever relevant. This is thanks to her Talent 1 when enhanced by her CCR-X Module. With it, her damage scales directly to an enemy’s DEF. So while runaway stat bloat becomes a problem for most units, Ceobe actually gets better, so she’s the rare old unit that has actually seen her value go up with powercreep! However, before you rush to pursue her expensive upgrades, do keep in mind that while that is true, she is still a more “specific” solution than the other more recent high powered units, so her priority tends to be lower the more meta options. She is instead the sort of unit you should begin to look towards when your core roles are filled out already and you can flex to more situational options.
Her main skill is her S2. It’s always been her best DPS skill by a good margin since her S1 is control oriented and her S3 is… weird (more on that in a moment), but it also happens to take advantage of her Talent the best. So while S2 has always been her only graded skill, that gap is even bigger now. It’s a bit unusual in terms of Masteries because most of the value is backloaded on S2M3. Most skills have the gains spread relatively evenly, but in Ceobe’s case, at M1 and M2, she only gains some minor cycle time improvement, but at M3 she gains an incredibly valuable interval reduction that greatly improves her DPS. It’s a rare sort of skill where you can visually see the difference at M3!
After that, her best investment is her fully upgraded CCR-X Module. While it is rare for this guide to make Module suggestions, this one vitally important to Ceobe as it represents a huge damage increase in her best use case. Meanwhile, her other skills are rather flawed, so there’s little reason to invest in them outside of desire or niche purposes.
As far as those go, neither is all that appealing. Her S1 is a short-cooldown charge-based skill that can Bind. That’s been useful at times in some niches, however while charge-based skills like this tend to be valuable, she tends to spend them all on the same target at once, wasting the Bind. The uptime on it isn’t all that good either, especially as more and more options are introduced to the game. However, it does have some pretty valuable Mastery gains thanks to an extra charge at S1M2 and an SP cost reduction plus Bind time improvement at S1M3.
Last, her S3 is the sort of skill that should make her feel fortunate she has her S2 because it’s pretty bad, and were it her only skill, Ceobe would not be held in such high regards. Arts damage tends to be more valuable, so turning it into Physical is a weird choice. It also has those brutally long old cycles that are mercifully a thing of the past. It’s just a weird overall skill that wasn’t good at the time, and has only aged worse.
Mostima#
* Note that Mostima’s S3 is graded assuming she has her SPC-Y Module at level 3. If you do not plan to get this Module fully upgraded, treat the priority of this skill significantly lower.
Back in the old days, there was a meme, “Moody Blues” which referred to three blue-themed units that were notably bad, even by the standards of the time. Mostima may be the most infamous of them in the modern game since Skadi and Ch’en both got alters. Which is funny because most people picked Mostima as an easy layup for an alter, yet here we are. Any day now… Anyway, that is to say, Mostima is pretty bad. She did get some life thanks to SPC-Y Module which allows her to have one of the best stalls in the game, but even that isn’t as valuable as it once was thanks to lots of competition who also do more. It all makes Mostima a tough investment. Her damage and cycles are bad, and she’s extremely expensive for fairly niche value, although that value can make her pretty nice for the more Advanced focused player.
Mostima’s main skill is her S3 which is the source of that mentioned control. It enhances the MVSPD reduction on her Talent 1, which itself is significantly enhanced by her SPC-Y Module upgrades. At SPC-Y mod3, she can hit 90-99% MVSPD reduction (depending on pot level). That’s strong enough control to give her quite a bit of Advanced value. However, be cautious before general investment because everything else about the skill is bad. The cycle is atrocious and her damage was bad even by year 1 standards. Now it’s downright horrific! She is not a unit with good Story value, especially considering she needs an expensive mod3 too! As far as Masteries specifically, the only real value is in her initial wind-up and uptime since her damage is basically negligible. The wind-up especially can be vitally important for Advanced clears.
You should probably pass on her other skills, however S2 can have some value if you’re really willing to go the extra investment mile. The main flaw with her S2 (aside from bad damage, again) is a really poor uptime. A 7 second Stun on ~38 SP is not good! However, if you’re willing to do a second fully leveled Module, SPC-X, that SP cost drops to just 26 SP. It’s still not a great uptime, but it does cycle fast enough to warrant the Stun on S2 usable. But to reiterate, this is an extremely fringe thing, pretty much only for waifu purposes. It’s an extremely expensive investment on her second best use case.
Pass on her S1 which is a worthless generic skill. Thankfully, these are largely a thing of the past. It has basically no value and should be avoided for any reason except showing off a maximum investment unit.
Eyjafjalla#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S2M3 | Breakpoint - S2M1 | |
| A+ | A- | ||
 | S3M3 | A | A- |
Eyjfjalla is a sort of funny unit. She was one of the best launch units, and the longest lasting DPS unit. She set the bar for Casters so high that it took all the way until Logos to truly powercreep her! But powercreep comes for everyone (except Nightingale it seems, but that’s a topic for another time) and Eyja was eventually brought low too. However, it does mean that she’s still a very solid unit. While there are lots of good Casters now, Eyja is still one of the better general purpose ones, although she does look a bit more flawed than she used to.
The old suggestion for her first skill was her S3, but that’s the skill that has declined the most, so instead, start with her S2. It is a powerful skill, doing good AoE splash damage with a pretty significant amount of RES-spread. It’s far from the best AFK-Caster skill these days, but is still solid for cheap set-and-forget damage. It has some pretty significant Masteries too, as most skills of this type from the era tended to. At S2M1 it gets an extra charge, and at S2M3 it drops the SP cost and improves the RES-shred, on top of a significant damage improvement.
Meanwhile, her S3 is her burst skill. It used to be one of the best in the game, along with SilverAsh’s S3, and the two of them were the solution to a lot of early problems. That lasted a long time too since it took a while for HG to introduce true competition to these sorts of burst skills. But competition did happen, and now Eyja’s S3 looks worse in comparison. Of course, it still has a great amount of burst damage. If you want to use Eyja specifically, or she just happens to be your only option (somehow…) then it’s still a great choice. However, in the modern game it has poor uptime on top of a massive downtime, making it rather tough to use compared to more powerful options like Logos’s or Lappland2’s S3s. If you do want to use Eyja though, it’s still a very strong Mastery with a well above average improvement to damage and an extra target at S3M3. It’s definitely not the S++ skill it used to be, but is still a solid option.
Pass on her S1. It’s stuck on Single Target without any upside, which makes it less valuable than her other two skills. Even at launch, it never found work compared to her much better S2.
Ifrit#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S2M3 | Breakpoint - S2M1 | |
| A | B+ | ||
 | S3M3 | A- | A+ |
Ifrit has held a lot of value over the years. She’s sort of funny because it turns out Blast Casters are generally terrible thanks to low DPS and low total damage, a fact that most people missed until we got a truly awful second one. But Ifrit was always well regarded, and the reason she still retains value, it turns out, is because she has an absurdly good Talent which gives a huge amount of unconditional RES-shred. However, her DPS is on the low side (it turns out, who knew), so by modern standards, she isn’t as valuable as she used to be if she can’t take advantage of that Talent.
Ifrit has two good skills, and the one to prioritize first will depend on what you want out of her. If you are only interested in her meta value, which is that RES-reduction, start with her S3 which has even more RES reduction on it. That RES reduction improves significantly over Mastery too, doubling to a flat -20 on top of her Talent. That alone is worthwhile, but she does gain some damage and a small cycle improvement as well. However, as a DPS skill, it’s not great by modern standards. Since the damage is dealt per second, it doesn’t scale well, nor is the base damage all that high in the first place.
Meanwhile, Ifrit is also one of the more valuable AFK-options. While this guide tends to frown on such skills, Ifrit’s range, Talent, and rapid cycling can make it a viable option. For many, that may be exactly what they want out of her, and she can be a very comfortable unit to keep on hand for routine tasks like Annihilations. Make special note of the S2M1 breakpoint which reduces her SP cost. Beyond that is just damage, but a well above average amount of it, so S2’s Masteries may be more valuable than S3 for many people.
Pass on her S1 which just doesn’t have any particular value. The cycle on it is quite bad at only 20 seconds up vs 40 SP down, nor does it have any of the special value her other two skills have.
5★ Casters#
Tecno#
In the latest entry to the war crimes division, we can now raise the dead, and force them to murder their friends. But they’re cute little ghosts now, so it’s OK. Tecno is a novel unit, and one with a fair amount of value in certain niches, or for those who like creative units. However, she’s ultimately a tad undertuned in general content. The ghosts have pretty poor stats, and she requires a lot of fodder enemies to build and maintain them. So she ends up being the sort of unit where if you’re reading this guide for practical advice, you should probably pass on her.
However, she does have value for the more creatively minded, and in that case both skills have some justification. S1 makes her ghosts more tanky while S2 has a much greater damage potential, so the choice between them is a situational one. As is typical though, give deference to the DPS skill, S2. DPS is almost always more generally valuable, but further in Tecno’s case, her ghosts are rather fragile so even with a fully invested S1, they’re still not bulky enough for general use. S2 meanwhile can reach some passable DPS while also having the utility of renewing her summons. Either way though, the choice is fairly low priority.
Warmy#
Unless you have an independently good skill (like Nymph’s S2), Primal Casters are a bit of an awkward archetype. They completely rely on another unit to be effective. That’s especially true for Warmy because both options, Bobbing and Yu are gacha units! That puts Warmy in a bad spot already, and as a 5★ she just doesn’t have enough impact to justify promotion for most people regardless.
Warmy does actually have a pretty decent effect though, so she can still be a fun off-meta option to consider, supposing you own and have raised one of those Burn applicators. Her S2 does double duty here, thanks to her Talent. Since her S2 increases her ATK, it causes her Talent to trigger for significantly more damage, while also allowing her to begin dealing Elemental Damage of her own. Mastery only improves her S2’s ATK, but that double dip still makes it pretty valuable, at least if you’re intent on making her work.
You should probably pass on her S1. For the 5★ Primal Casters, it’s their skill that applies their injury type, but it’s just too weak at the rarity to be usable. The problem is that Primal Casters inflict injury as a percentage of damage dealt, meaning it’s reduced by enemy RES. Enemies you’d actually want to use Elemental Damage against usually have higher RES. If they didn’t, normal Arts damage would be better in the first place, which makes it very hard for them to actually apply that injury type to any enemy that matters. About the only reason to pursue her S1 is if you’re dedicated to using Warmy and lack the other Burn options.
Santalla#
Santalla is a decent Splash Caster… at least for her rarity. She does good(ish) burst DPS with decent control, albeit with a touch of RNG. None of her value is particularly good in a meta context, so she isn’t a general recommendation, but she’s a pretty good option for various niche clears, or even if you just happen to like her.
Mastery with Santalla is pretty straightforward and S2 is her only skill with value. Mastery represents a decent DPS gain, which makes it worthwhile, but notably, little else changes aside from a few SP. If you don’t enjoy the skill at SL7, Mastery is unlikely to change your opinion on it.
The RNG on it can also be a frustrating thing, so she’ll occasionally require multiple attempts in certain niche clears, but thankfully it’s not as bad as it looks either. The icicles occur in a rotating fashion of parallel lines along her orientation (that is, columns if she is positioned up/down and rows if she is positioned left/right). They fall, relative to her, left > right > center, then repeat. Within that column/row it is still random. This pattern, along with the splash, allows her to still apply Freeze relatively consistently, although the RNG can still result in frustrating misses.
Pass on her S1 which is a low-value generic skill. Swift Strike happens to be one of the better generic skills, but anything special in her kit is tied to her S2. So by using S1, she’s just a generic Splash Caster with no upside.
Harmonie#
Harmonie is a bit of an odd unit because the main features of her kit don’t work particularly well together. In theory, her MVSPD reduction is probably meant to allow her to build charges while also preventing blockers from getting overwhelmed while she’s DPSing them, but in practice that doesn’t really work since that’s not how control effects like this are really used. So while her control can be useful in a variety of niches, she doesn’t actually do meaningful damage to the very targets she is snaring, resulting in a clunky incongruous kit. In most cases, the cheaper Indigo will be a far better investment.
That said, Harmonie isn’t awful by any means, and as said, her MVSPD reduction can be useful in various niches. As with all Mystic Casters, only her S2 is worth particular attention, which is the skill that has said snare. However, to further exacerbate Harmonie’s problems, the Mastery gains aren’t terribly impressive either. As a percentage, her DoT does improve by a reasonable value, but it’s negligible damage in either case. Instead the main feature is the additional interval reduction at S2M3, but it’s not a large gain, resulting in under 10% more DPS.
Pass on her S1 unless you really want to maximize your usage. All Mystic Casters have the same S1, although oddly it goes by different names each time. The idea behind it is a rapid cycling skill they can use to quickly build charges, but it requires awkward placement to work that is usually a net loss. Especially for a control oriented unit like Harmonie, that’s not a worthwhile use case.
Qanipalaat#
While Qanipalaat is far from a great Caster, he’s got enough going for him that he can be occasionally useful. His on-demand Levitate, which has a decent duration on a passable cycle (thanks to the CCR-Y base effect) has given him that occasional value. For example, he was a great low-Hope solution to IS#4’s ED2 boss. However, outside of that Levitate feature, he doesn’t look all that great with relatively mediocre DPS.
His skill to that effect is his S2, which is the only one with that Levitate on it, but importantly, it’s probably not worth Mastery for that purpose. The Levitate duration does not change from SL7 and the SP cost only drops by a mere 4 SP. Most of the Mastery value is actually loaded into his damage instead, which isn’t why most people would be interested in him. If your only intent is to keep him as an option for rare instances, he’ll be perfectly fine at a much cheaper E1. So Mastery is only for niche or husbando-enjoyers.
Probably pass on his S1 unless you play in an especially constrained niche. It has no way to Levitate itself, so it would mainly be used for drone targeting. But there’s a lot of good options for that. So unless you’re severely limiting yourself, there isn’t a lot of value in an expensive fringe choice.
Astgenne#
Before she became a jaded overworked lab junky whose blood has been replaced by coffee, Astgenne was a bright eyed rising star. She also happened to be a fairly quality Caster, at least for her rarity. While not quite a special meta quantity thanks to her high-DP cost and limited utility, she has enough DPS and enough Slow to be valuable in a variety of niches.
In any case, her original form’s main skill is her S2 which is a pretty classic Chain Caster skill, but a surprisingly good one. The dual targeting works well with the bounce gimmick since it effectively doubles her AoE damage. While most such skills would create a single chain, Astgenne’s creates two which means enemies can be hit more than once. That results in some pretty good damage, at least for her rarity. Now to be clear, Astgenne is not a meta consideration. While she is one of the stronger 5★ Casters (which is not a high bar) she is a rather expensive investment for the value compared to the higher rarities. Still, her damage, control, and slightly longer range have meant she sees pretty consistent usage in a variety of niches.
Pass on her S1 which doesn’t have the upside of her S2. While her S2 doesn’t exactly cycle quickly, it’s fast enough that it makes the 7 SP S1 not look as good. It also does worse overall damage by quite a bit. Further, the bounce effect doesn’t matter anyway since the Chain Caster E2 promotion already expands the targeting to four. There just isn’t any upside to using her S1 over her S2.
Rockrock#
Rockrock is one of the strongest 5★ DPS units, a fact that is both a blessing and a curse. The reason it’s a curse is because that’s all she does. Her DPS is actually better than a lot of 6★s, believe it or not, but… that’s it. She does a lot of Arts damage to a single target and nothing else. The 6★s, the good ones anyway, tend to do a lot of other things beyond just raw ST DPS. DPS is also the easiest thing to replace. So while she is a great unit, Rockrock is ultimately a very replaceable one so makes for a tough general investment suggestion. However, if you’re looking to dip your toes into lower rarities, or just happen to like her, she becomes one of the very first to consider!
Her only skill worth Mastery is her S2, which is the source of all that DPS. When she reaches that Overload effect, she gains a boatload of damage. The drawback of stunning herself is unfortunate, but ultimately a very worthwhile drawback for the damage you get out of her. Mastery makes a big difference too. The Trait improvement is a significant source of damage, on top of the base 20 ASPD. Mastery is a big DPS gain, and for a unit that is only DPS, that’s very important.
Pass on her S1 which is a generic skill. These are usually awful and not worth pursuing, and in Rockrock’s case, it’s so awful that I’m going to complain about it here. It’s a case where there’s quite literally no benefit over her S2. They cycle the same and while S1 has 10 more ASPD at base, but loses all the extra damage from Overload. The lack of Stun doesn’t matter either since it’s just chip damage from auto-attacks lost. It’s the sort of wasted design space that frustrates me to no end, and is thankfully pretty rare in modern design.
Kjera#
Kjera is one of the better welfares out there. Mech-Accord Casters are one of those natively good archetypes since they end up doing a lot of damage at base as a trade off for their ramp-up. Kjera kicks that up by adding a dose of powerful, albeit heavily RNG, control. That said, she isn’t a meta consideration at all. Even ignoring the higher rarities, she has some strong competition between Rockrock and the much cheaper and great-in-IS Click. Still, she has enough going for her that she ends up being one of the better 5★ Casters out there.
S2 is her main skill which has all those upsides. The Mastery gains on it may not look too impressive to casual inspection, but Mech-Accord Casters tend to be reliant on their ATK stat. Remember that it ramps up and she gets 2 drones during skill, so the relatively small +15% ATK from Mastery totals up quite nicely.
Pass on her S1 which is a low-value generic skill. Although it does have a higher +ATK, she loses that extra drone, resulting in less damage and less control. About the only advantage it has compared to her S2 is cycle, but since her S2 is her special value, there isn’t any purpose to her S1.
Mint#
Mint and Beeswax are a weird pair because they’re pretty close to identical and were released 2.5 months from each other. It made for some interesting discussion on their relative value at the time since their ranged tank gimmick was a novel thing in an era where there weren’t a lot of options. Of course, now many years later, that’s no longer true. Even at the time ranged tanks were largely a situational gimmick since they can’t block from a high tile, and now there are lots of other, and much better, options. Which is to say, raising either is a matter of niche or waifu, and the choice between them really comes down to which you find cuter (hint: Beeswax is cuter).
Anyway, if you have bad taste and want to raise Mint over Beeswax, her main skill is her S2 which is her defining feature. Appropriately nicknamed a dishwasher, she shifts everyone around in range, which can be a pretty nice control effect against certain enemies. Mastery is notably important since she gains a Shift Force increase at S2M3. The Force until then is the lowest possible, so that upgrade is a big difference in the targets she can actually move and interrupt. The fact she gains a good amount of damage and SP cost on top of that is just gravy! However, even at the enhanced Shift force, it’s still fairly low, which limits the targets she’s effective against.
If you really like her, you could consider her S1 as well, but it’s less of a consideration as Beeswax’s similar S1 is. While the latter has a pretty significant damage difference between her two skills, that’s not really true with Mint. Of course, S1 does have more damage, so it’s not a valueless skill, but the gap is a lot lower, so a secondary Mastery looks less appealing.
Beeswax#
Mint and Beeswax are a weird pair because they’re pretty close to identical and were released 2.5 months from each other. It made for some interesting discussion on their relative value at the time since their ranged tank gimmick was a novel thing in an era where there weren’t a lot of options. Of course, now many years later, that’s no longer true. Even at the time ranged tanks were largely a situational gimmick since they can’t block from a high tile, and now there are lots of other, and much better, options. Which is to say, raising either is a matter of niche or waifu, and the choice between them really comes down to which you find cuter (hint: Beeswax is cuter).
If you’ve made the correct choice between them, Beeswax’s S2 is her main skill, although her S1 may be a decent secondary option. It summons a big free blocker that’s relatively bulky which is a nice benefit on her short cycle. The Mastery gains on it are good, but of the more subtle variety. Her SP drops by 6 which is a big difference relative to the cost, and her Stun gets almost double the duration too. While her Stun uptime is relatively low in any case, it’s a lot better at S2M3.
If you like Beeswax, you could consider her S1 as well, although it is less special. Her S2 doesn’t have any ATK modifier except for the initial burst from the obelisk. So while she does attack, it’s just at her base ATK which results in unimpressive DPS. Her S1 meanwhile has an ATK modifier on it, resulting in much better damage. Of course, it’s still not great damage, so this is a fringe waifu consideration, but it may come in handy for the times her obelisk is unnecessary or unusable (since it needs a deployable tile).
Leonhardt#
I am a well known bunny lover, but lest you think I am too biased towards the female bunnies, Leonhardt is a pretty great bunny. He was fairly funny at the time of his release because he actually tended to be more usable than the 6★ Splash Casters of the time (which were infamously bad, and still kinda are). While he is certainly not a meta consideration, and never was even at the time, he’s a solid Caster for those who favor off-meta approaches.
His value is tied to his S2. These Manual Activation Charge-based skills tend to be pretty powerful, and Leonhardt is no exception despite a relatively high SP cost. The damage of each activation isn’t too crazy, but the fact they’re controllable, True AoE, and can come in multiples, on top of a rare RES-debuff, makes it a solid skill. As for Mastery, first make note of a breakpoint at S2M1 that grants him an extra charge. That’s a very important upgrade. He also drops an SP cost at every Mastery level, which makes a big difference in his net usability. So while Leo isn’t the strongest 5★ Caster, his Masteries are fairly important to using him.
Pass on his S1 which is one of those generic waste of space skills. It’s a good thing that HG has stopped including these (for the most part) in modern design, because the overall guide update is rekindling my hatred of these skills. Even I as a bunny-phile have never found a place for it to be useful over his S2.
Leizi#
* Note that Leizi’s S2 is graded assuming she has her CHA-X Module at level 2. If you do not plan to get this Module to that level, treat the priority of this skill significantly lower.
They don’t make Modules like Leizi’s anymore! The OG Leizi is a storied unit. On her release, she was one of the worst in the game, if not the worst. She was in a bad archetype and had an absolutely horrific cycle. First came a couple buffs thanks to Passenger also sucking, but the real kicker was her Module which is one of the literal best in the game in terms of how it upgrades the base unit. The level two effect of her CHA-X Module grants one SP per unblocked unit it hits, so she can actually gain 4 SP per attack! Suddenly her 80 SP doesn’t look so bad! In fact, she can end up with around a 30 SP cost instead! 50 SP from a Module is a pretty damn nice upgrade!
This means that Leizi is a pretty nice unit now, at least by 5★ standards. Of course as a primarily DPS unit she gets outclassed. She’s also very expensive to promote thanks to her required Module, for someone who will be eventually replaced, so she isn’t a meta consideration. But she’s one of the better options if you’re looking to dip your toes into the lower rarities.
As mentioned, start with her Module to level 2 first. It’s a far bigger upgrade than her Masteries. (mod3 is a luxury, save it for last). Once that is done, her S2 is her primary skill. This guide decries generic skills such as her S1, and for good reason. Her S1 actually isn’t terrible here though since she can cycle it so incredibly fast. However, her S2 simply does more damage, and by quite a lot. She cycles it so fast that there’s little reason to consider her S1 instead. The Mastery gains on S2 are pretty significant too, thanks to a well above average ATK gain.
Amiya#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S3M3 | A+ | A |
 | S2M1 | Breakpoint - S2M1 | |
| None | |||
Amiya is our daughter, so you should Master all of her skills and do all of her Modules. You do love her, right? S++ M21!
Jokes aside, our lovely game mascot is a very solid unit. Better though, what she does is a special value that’s useful to have even on fully meta teams. When you consider that Amiya must be E2’d to progress in the story, it makes Amiya’s Masteries a surprisingly decent investment. While we do have more sources of True Damage now, it’s still an extremely valuable tool to have, bypassing many irritating mechanics. Further, actual True Damage (as opposed to Elemental) from Ranged tiles is still rare, so Amiya can be a useful unit to promote even if you have those other options!
Her Caster form’s main skill, and the only one that really has that special value, is her S3. Mastery makes a huge difference too. When you consider the sorts of targets you’ll want to use True Damage against, every bit of damage matters, and Amiya gains a lot of it. The difference from SL7 to M3 is about 20% more total damage, which will absolutely matter if you’re using it. Then she gains a big chunk of HP too. It’s certainly not the most valuable Mastery out there, but is one that most players will probably want to consider at some point, a rare thing to be said about any other 5★ Mastery.
As a small aside, don’t worry about her SP cost. She generates a lot of SP from her Talent, especially if you also invest in her Module, so it’s not nearly as bad as it looks. It can actually be downright fast!
Jokes about M9ing our daughter aside, Mastery beyond that is a luxury firmly in the desire only realm, although they also aren’t bad. Her S2 is her typical secondary skill. It actually has some pretty high DPS and cycles very fast with her Talent and Module. However, the RNG nature of it, and Auto Activation, can make it a frustrating experience to use. It also is only regular Arts damage which is much easier to replace than her S3’s True Damage. Do make note of a valuable breakpoint at S2M1 though, which adds an extra bullet per attack. That’s a significant damage improvement for the cost and may be worth grabbing even if you don’t really plan to use the skill.
Last is her S1. It’s an uninteresting generic skill, but considering how her Talent greatly reduces the down time, and the drawbacks in her other skills, it can occasionally be useful for maximalists.
4★ Casters#
Pudding#
Pudding bucks some of the trends of 4★s vs 5★s, but not in a good way. One of the pieces of advice that comes up again and again in this guide is that even if the 5★s are “better” the 4★s tend to be the better investment. They’re cheaper to promote, still usable, and are valuable in IS. Pudding though, is the opposite. The reason for this is because the competition in her rarity is strong. Both Click and Indigo are amazing units, and even Haze has some niche usage. This means Pudding isn’t a competitive IS pick, plus she’s worse than a 5★ Welfare of the same archetype, Astgenne, who is one of the better 5★ Casters. It all means the only reason to raise Pudding is because you play in a 4★ niche or just happen to like her.
Still though, Pudding isn’t a bad unit, so her Masteries aren’t unreasonable either. Her main skill is her S2, and the primary benefit of it can be hard to understand thanks to the in-game description. Normally, a Chain Caster’s bounce can’t return to the same enemy. With her S2, Pudding can. This results in some pretty solid DPS, supposing there are at least two enemies in range, since the chain will ricochet between them. Mastery on it is relatively average, with a pretty typical improvement to her DPS, but given the low 4★ costs, that’s very much worthwhile.
Pass on her S1 which is a generic skill. It has much worse DPS than her S2, even against a single target, so there’s really no purpose in it.
Indigo#
* Note that Indigo’s S2 is graded assuming she has her MSC-X Module at level 3. If you do not plan to get this Module fully upgraded, treat the priority of this skill significantly lower.
Indigo is a surprisingly powerful control unit thanks to a great Module. While not as obscenely powerful as Ethan (but who is?), she has a high chance to keep multiple targets in range Bound for her S2’s duration which makes her one of the best low-rarity Casters for niche clears. She’s actually significantly more valuable than her 5★ counterparts on top of being cheaper!
Both Mastery and Module are essential to this purpose. S2M2 gives a significant boost to her Bind chance (a 12.5% improvement assuming mod3) and S2M3 gives a big boost to her damage output. Like Ethan, Indigo requires a lot of investment for her rarity, but the results are well worth the investment for even slightly off-meta approaches.
Pass on her S1 unless you really want to maximize your usage. All Mystic Casters have the same S1, although oddly it goes by different names each time. The idea behind it is a rapid cycling skill they can use to quickly build charges, but it requires awkward placement to work that is usually a net loss. Especially for a control oriented unit like Indigo, that’s not a worthwhile use case.
It’s also worth a note that while she is a strong unit, if you are only looking for a general purpose IS Caster, you should probably start with Click. Indigo is still powerful in IS, but she tends to be a more “specific” solution for certain squads and endings. She really needs her Module and Masteries to be viable which requires additional Hope to access. Unlike Ethan, that isn’t worth the cost in all cases. Although there’s nuance here as far as Masteries, because you probably shouldn’t do either for general IS runs! Click is the better starting point here because she works great at E1 already, not because her Masteries are better!
Click#
Click is an interesting unit in the game’s history. When she came out, in a time before Modules helped address some of the flaws, all Casters besides Eyja and Ifrit were… really bad. Like really bad. This made Click surprising because even though she only did basic DPS with a low-RNG Stun, she was actually good enough at it that she was really the first low-rarity Casters that was any good! This is a crown that Click has largely managed to keep to this day, despite lots of reasonable options now, primarily thanks to IS.
Which is all to say that Click is a great basic unit. She’s cheap to promote, does good damage without heavy investment, and is free to recruit in IS. While basic, that’s extremely valuable! However, before you dive into E2 and Masteries on her, it’s worth a note that those are unnecessary promotions. You generally don’t want to spend Hope to promote 4★s during an IS run. One of the big appeals with Click is that she’s already great at E1, so simply, that extra investment is unnecessary.
However, lots of people like to promote their 4★s for no reason other than the amount of work they put in, and Click does have pretty decent Mastery gains. They can be especially nice for low-rarity niches where Click is similarly valuable! Her S2 is of course her main skill, and the gains on it are solid improvements. She gains uptime, a good chunk of ATK (which matters for Mech-Accord Casters), and a Stun improvement too, albeit a hard to notice one. Considering the low costs, it can be a worthwhile investment.
Pass on her S1 which is a generic skill that has little upside compared to her far better S2. Thankfully, HG has stopped doing these, but even the inclusion here wasn’t enough to inhibit Click!
Haze#
Haze is a big beneficiary of the Hope reduction for 4★s in IS. She’s never been a bad unit and even had some niche value prior, but before then, she had to contend with competition from both Amiya and Click who are both fantastic low-rarity units. They’ve seen their value rise too, but Haze becomes a viable alternative in more Advanced IS runs now thanks to her Talent. She is a free to recruit source of RES reduction which can be quite extreme in places! Further for Haze, that RES reduction improves pretty significantly at E2 and with her Module upgrades, so while you generally want to avoid extra promotion in your 4★s for IS, it can actually make sense with Haze if you’re interested in more min-maxed high difficulty runs!
Now to be clear, this is a pretty extreme circumstance that will matter to few people. If you weren’t already aware of her use, proceed with caution. For most people, Click is the much better IS Caster, and even Indigo is more valuable for niche runs. However, if she appeals to you, Mastery on her main skill, S2, is actually pretty important. You need to be very aware of her -HP since she is incredibly fragile, but at S2M3 she has enough ASPD to reduce her interval to 1 second which makes her RES debuff 100% uptime. It’s a good DPS gain too (although that isn’t the reason she’s brought), so it’s actually a decently valuable Mastery if you think you’re the sort of player to actually use her.
Since those last two paragraphs have been mostly centered around IS (which is where her value is in the modern game), it’s worth a quick point of clarity that Haze is a lot less special in the regular game. If you have no interest in IS, you should probably pass on her. Her RES debuff is fairly unique, but Amiya, Click, and Indigo are all better general choices. However, she does have enough going on her to be a pretty useful waifu promotion as well.
Probably pass on her S1, although it could be an option. S2 has far better effects, and S1 doesn’t help her niche at all. However, there are places where the -HP debuff on her S2 can be a burden. That’s quite an extreme circumstance on an already extreme unit though, so most players shouldn’t bother.
4★ and 5★ Ungraded Casters#
Miss.Christine#
Primal Casters are inherently a tough archetype. Even the higher rarities suffer from the reliance on another unit, but while the 6★s have enough design space to (sometimes) make them viable, the 5★s have no such luck and Miss.Christine is no exception there. She’s hurt worse by the fact Tragodia is so absurdly good all on his own, so even if you’re willing to promote and use both, she still won’t have much of an impact. Still, Miss.Christine is a popular unit (meow) and she does tend to be a bit more useable than her fellow 5★s at least. She is ungraded, but if you want to raise her anyway, both skills are options, depending on what you want out of her.
In most cases, her S2 will be the better option. If you’re using Tragodia as well, it basically wins by default since there’s no need for her S1’s NI build-up. However, even without him, it’s a functional basic Caster skill (although to be clear, not a good one). The “summon” aspect of it isn’t a real summon, but is rather just an anchor which keeps her damage in one spot. That’s a bad thing, but she makes up for it a little with some ok-ish AoE Arts DPS at least. The gains on it are quite strong too, with around 35% more Arts DPS at S2M3, and even more Elemental Damage if being used with Tragodia.
If you’re a niche player who doesn’t have access to another NI applicator like Tragodia, you may get some value out of her S1 instead. For the other 5★ Primal Casters, their S1s are usually only an act of desperation since they need to work through enemy RES. If an enemy has lower-RES, it’s almost always better to just use regular Arts damage instead, but since NI has a powerful control aspect, it can be worth using against more targets than the others. When fully invested, Miss.Christine can actually inflict NI in one cycle up to about 60 RES. That… could be worse. It is a very expensive investment for a very niche thing, but still may be useful to some people. Mastery will make a difference too almost regardless of any gains, simply because she’s a fairly poor applicator in general so any improvement will be welcome.
Aroma#
Aroma is the sort of unit that’s so bad it’s hard to even suggest a skill. Blast Casters, it turns out, suck if you don’t have broken Talents, which Aroma does not. Her DPS is poor on top of high costs, and her Talent only triggers once at the worst possible time for a unit with her range. Neither skill does much to help those problems so you should really be spending your resources elsewhere. S2 has more combo potential, but has terrible uptime and does little on her own. Even when you can properly combo it with a consistent Levitater, she still does worse damage than nearly any other 5★ Caster alone. S1 works a little better with her own Talent, but the DPS is so bad that it still isn’t worth anything. The only suggestion with Aroma is to spend your resources on someone else.
Diamante#
Diamante was our first Primal Casters, but is unfortunately a pretty bad unit. Primal Casters in general have a tough go of things since they inherently rely on another unit (the 5★s especially), and Diamante doesn’t bring anywhere near enough to be particularly good even when things line up well. Further, he’s in the weakest form of Elemental Injury. About his only value is paired with Valarqvin in 5★ niche clears since he’s an expensive and suboptimal pick in any other case. Most 6★s and even many 5★s will out DPS him even against hard targets Elemental Damage should be good against!
If you play in a niche that includes him, or just like him, his main skill is S2 which is his skill that deals that extra Elemental Damage, supposing someone else already applied the Necrosis. The Mastery gains on it aren’t terribly impressive, with a relatively paltry +15 ASPD, but the improvement to his extra Elemental Damage can make a difference since that’s his whole theoretical value in the first place.
You should probably pass on his S1. For the 5★ Primal Casters, it’s their skill that applies their injury type, but it’s just too weak at the rarity to be usable. The problem is that Primal Casters inflict injury as a percentage of damage dealt, meaning it’s reduced by enemy RES. Enemies you’d actually want to use Elemental Damage against usually have higher RES. If they didn’t, normal Arts damage would be better in the first place, which makes it very hard for them to actually apply that injury type to any enemy that matters. Further for Diamante, Valarqvin, a Necrosis Ritualist, is freely available at the same rarity, so there isn’t even good reason to pursue it for extreme niche purposes.
Delphine#
Delphine isn’t quite a bad unit, but her take on the Mystic Caster archetype is not a valuable one. She is oriented around a big burst of initial damage. She does that well enough to find some niche usage now and then, or if she appeals to you, but HP% targeting restrictions like hers tend to kill general value, which is already hampered by her rarity. Which is all to say, Delphine is a desire-only tier a unit (look towards Indigo if you want a non-6★ Mystic Caster).
If she appeals to you though, stick with her S2 for Mastery. Despite the HP% targeting restriction, it still has a far bigger impact and the residual damage can actually total up nicely if well placed. Mastery is a pretty significant ATK increase too, which is a double whammy for her between her charges and the DoT.
Pass on her S1 unless you really want to maximize your usage. All Mystic Casters have the same S1, although oddly it goes by different names each time. The idea behind it is a rapid cycling skill they can use to quickly build charges, but it requires awkward placement to work that is usually a net loss. However, given her S2’s restriction, it can have a bit more use than it does with the other Mystic Casters.
Minimalist#
It’s very weird that Minimalist is a Mech-Accord Caster because none of his kit interacts with the drone aspect at all in a way that wouldn’t have just been better if he was a Core Caster instead¹. It means that while the rest of them tend to be pretty special units, Minimalist is far less special. Instead, his novel aspect is that he’s a very rare instance of a Caster with a consistent always-up skill like his S2. That isn’t an especially high ceiling niche, but it has given him some occasional use and he’s an OK unit if you’re a pink weirdo who especially likes Durins.
His only skill worth Mastery is his S2. It’s that mentioned consistent skill and has pretty valuable Masteries too. In addition to the damage, S2M2 drops an 1 SP from the cost which is a sizable upgrade to his output. Meanwhile, his S1 is a generic Swift Strike skill. Swift Strike is one of the better generic skills, but for Minimalist, he doesn’t have any part of his kit that works well with it, except for speeding up the drone ramp-up which doesn’t matter. There’s vanishingly few places it’s better than his S2.
¹ Being pedantic here, technically his S2 does ramp up his drone faster. However, if he was a Core Caster with a higher base ATK, there would effectively be no difference. Thus the fact he’s a Mech-Accord Caster is notably pointless compared to the others.
Corroserum#
Before Corroserum, it was common to think Blast Casters were just good. It turns out, that isn’t the case. They’re bad at base, and Ifrit (the first and only one for a long time) just happened to have two broken Talents. Corroserum meanwhile, has a terrible Talent (dependence on not attacking is never a good thing), which proved that Blast Casters actually kinda suck without some design help!
If it wasn’t clear, Corroserum is a bad unit that you shouldn’t be investing in. He costs a ton of DP, his damage is incredibly poor, and without the benefits Ifrit has, his range is actually really restrictive too. However, unlike his fellow basement dweller Aroma, Corroserum actually does have a niche now and then, albeit a small one. His S2 is a True-AoE Silence for the duration. Now, Silence is a very situational ability which is entirely dependent on the stage needs, and the 5★s already have some great applicators of it, but nevertheless, his ability to apply it in an AoE does have some rare niche use now and then.
Pass on his S1. Technically it has more DPS, and the self-Stun triggers his Talent, but that’s pretty strong cope for two effects that shouldn’t exist on any unit at all. Instead, it’s missing his niche value and has a very long initial wind-up (on top of his high-DP cost) so it has very little value on top of feeling awful to use.
Lava the Purgatory#
At the time, Lava2 improved on the existing Splash Casters a little bit (which were, and still are, awful) and I personally coped pretty hard that she might be decent. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out and time has only been less kind. Splash Casters have a high DP cost and low DPS, so very few of them have ended up generally usable, and Lava2 has bad SP costs too. She is a waifu-only tier of unit in the modern game, with little upside.
If you want to raise her anyway though, both skills are options without a clear winner. I’ve always favored his S2 since it has a True AoE on a relatively fast interval, especially if the fields overlap. That makes it useful in some cases like hordes or hit-count enemies. However, the DPS on it is low, especially if the fields don’t overlap which is surprisingly difficult. S1 meanwhile will have better DPS, less restrictions, lower SP costs, and a better range. That tends to mean it’s the better “every day” skill, although it lacks any particular special value too. Which to favor if you don’t want to do both is largely a matter of what you want out of her, because the primary suggestion is to not do either.
Iris#
Iris isn’t a bad unit and has had some occasional niche usage, but not quite enough to be generally viable. The idea behind her kit is that she spends her charges first, then you activate S2 to stall which allows her to build up more charges. This gives her some decent damage and stall on a reasonable cycle! However, it’s pretty restrictive. S2 can only target two enemies, so more than that means no additional charges. The damage is also not all that great by meta standards, nor does she do anything once spent. However, even if that appeals to you, her Mastery gains are on the weak side. She gains a small improvement to SP cost, but the only other gain is to the “pop” at the end of the Sleep which is a small total amount of damage. The Sleep duration doesn’t change nor does she gain more ATK that would help her charge attacks. So Mastery is best left for either the extreme min-maxers or just for completion’s sake on a waifu character.
Pass on her S1 unless you really want to maximize your usage. All Mystic Casters have the same S1, although oddly it goes by different names each time. The idea behind it is a rapid cycling skill they can use to quickly build charges, but it requires awkward placement to work that is usually a net loss.
Tomimi#
Tomimi has a decent skill, but is killed by her Talent. You don’t want your Casters doing low-DPH Physical damage in the first place (just use a Marksman!), but even setting that aside, her range is so restrictive that it makes it nearly unusable, even with the benefits of her mod2. Ultimately, she’s just a bad unit with no niche.
If you’d like to make her work anyway, S2 is her only skill worth looking at. The RNG nature of it can be very frustrating when you need one specific effect, but two of the individual effects are decent enough. The Stun is the same as her interval, meaning 100% uptime (if you like to gamble) and the DPH effect is decent. The AoE effect is a bit of a dud, but may still be useful in some cases. Mastery on it is essential too since there’s actually a good chance for it not to trigger at anything less than S2M3 which… is kind of insane. In any case, there’s a lot wrong with Tomimi’s kit, so this is a waifu-only tier of investment.
Pass on her S1. While the ASPD is decent, her DPH is super low thanks to becoming Physical and it has no other effects. I suppose that might be useful on occasion for the more extreme waifu players, but Tomimi is too bad of a unit to justify a fringe investment like that.
Absinthe / Зоя#
One of my fellow Tier List contributors, PlatybusGod, threatens my wellbeing if I don’t say good things about Doc and Absinthe. He tried, and failed, to get me to move her up to graded units in the large-scale overhaul, so this is my attempt to make it up to him and say something… nice about the saddest bear. It’s not easy though.
Near the launch of the game, Absinthe was considered as a viable alternative to Amiya for those who didn’t have Eyjafjajalla or Ifrit. There just weren’t many viable non-6★ Casters at the time, nor was Amiya’s True Damage commonly useful, which gave Absinthe some decent early usage. However, those times are far behind us now. There’s a ton of viable low-rarity Casters now, who are better, cheaper, and useful in IS. Absinthe, unfortunately, has no niche beyond her DPS which makes her a tough sell, ultimately making her a waifu-only promotion in the modern game (sorry Platy).
If she appeals to you though, S1 will generally be her best skill. The wind-up is on the long-side for this type of skill, but her DPS is “OK” if you can wait it out. It’s definitely not a good DPS skill, but is enough to be usable if you want her on the team. S2 meanwhile may have some niche usage, but the restriction is generally too harsh to be viable. The 50% HP threshold is tough because it means you need another DPS unit already, and even supposing that, her DPS is usually worse than contemporary options.
Nightmare#
| Skill | Mastery | Story | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
 | S1M1 | Breakpoint - S1M1 | |
| None | |||
 | S2M3 | None | |
Nightmare, along with the OG Greyy, are two of the more interesting units in the ungraded Casters section. The reason is that they are both super bad, but nevertheless have managed to carve out decent niche usage. This means they’re among the worst if you’re looking for general Casters, but might be some of the better options down here in the basement depending on the niches you play in.
To reiterate, don’t raise Nightmare if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re reading this guide looking for real advice, spend your resources elsewhere, because if you’re the sort of player who would get value out of her, you probably already know the answer without the need of a guide.
That out of the way, if she appeals to you, both skills will have some value depending on the niche you play in, but if you don’t play in a niche, there’s no good suggestion since both skills are flawed. S2 usually comes out ahead. It has a snare and True Damage on a pretty good uptime which has occasionally been useful on certain fast moving unblockable enemies (such as the Under Tides schizo-flowers). However, the fact it is Auto Activation makes it hard to place well. The snare also works counter to the True Damage, resulting in neither effect being particularly powerful.
S1 meanwhile used to be the only healing Caster skill which gave it some value in the Caster-only niche, but that’s just a historical footnote at this point. Marcille’s S1 now does the role far better, so there isn’t much reason to pursue Nightmare’s S1 Mastery. However, do note it has a Breakpoint at S1M1 which adds an extra target that may be worth grabbing even for rare use.
Skyfire#
Skyfire is a bad unit with bad damage who also feels bad to use with a nearly 5 second attack interval. The most notable thing about her is actually her famous VA, who was probably the most notable one at the game’s launch. It’s kind of remarkable they wasted Kana Ueda on such a bad unit!
At any rate, Skyfire has found some occasional niche use. S2 extends her attack interval to that painful degree, but every attack does guarantee an AoE Stun and her uptime is surprisingly good for the era, when long downtimes were common. Mastery on it is quite strong too, turning her Stun from a micro-Stun into something actually noticeable, on top of more damage and uptime.
If you want to maximize your Skyfire use, you could consider her S1 as well despite being a basic ATK up skill. Due to the interval increase on her S2, it actually has much worse DPS, so S1 comes out ahead of her Stun isn’t needed. However, the fact we’re discussing a generic ATK skill up skill as a viable option should tell you all you need to know about the quality of Skyfire as a unit.
Akkord#
Akkord isn’t especially good by the 4★ Caster standards, but she does have some value since her AoE competition is even worse. Blast Casters are just not an especially good archetype without some significant help which can usually only be found at the 6★ rarity. In fact, Akkord has nothing on her kit but damage, ultimately resulting in a poor DPS unit that also costs a lot of red certs. However, as said the existing 4★ AoE Casters are even worse, so she does have some occasional value for the niche players.
In such a case, you’ll likely want to Master both skills. Her only real value is in low-rarity niches, and in those cases, you need everything you can get, which gives value to both of her skills since they fill different roles. S2 will have a higher DPS so will tend to be her primary skill. Mastery represents a fairly large improvement as well since the additional “shockwave” improves at S2M3, although the DPS is still relatively low in either case. S1 meanwhile has lower DPS, but a more consistent application. While such skills aren’t often worthwhile when their DPS is so much lower, S2 has a rather high SP cost by modern standards, which makes S1 a viable alternative. It also has valuable Masteries thanks to an SP drop at S1M2, although it isn’t labeled as a breakpoint here due to its relatively low value as a skill.
Greyy#
OG Greyy, along with Nightmare, are two of the more interesting units in the ungraded Casters section. The reason is that they are both super bad, but nevertheless have managed to carve out decent niche usage. This means they’re among the worst if you’re looking for general Casters, but might be some of the better options down here in the basement depending on the niches you play in.
In Greyy’s case, it’s because with his Module, he can reach a 100% uptime Slow¹ in an AoE splash area for his S2’s uptime. At S2M1 and mod3, the Slow duration exceeds his attack interval. While his damage is horrible which prevents him from being a general consideration, it has given Greyy a decent amount of use in the 4★ niche which is more than most of the other ungraded Casters can boast! However, do keep in mind that it is only good in niches. In the meta sense, there are just far too many better options, and Greyy’s damage is abysmal, meaning he has no general value.
Pass on his S1. It does cycle better than his S2, but without the Slow enhancement, the Slow uptime is nowhere near as potent. Even if you really love Greyy, his 5★ form is a lot better, so there’s very little reason to pursue it.
¹ It’s notable that Earthspirit with her Module also fills this role, and often better since she is a True AoE. However, in the 4★ niche when such stalls are needed, both Greyy and Earthspirit are often cycled together.
Gitano#
Gitano is a bad unit with very limited use. In the old days, she could be a viable starter unit, but now there’s so many better common options that she has basically no value. Even her fellow basement dweller 4★ Splash Caster, Greyy, has some niche value which Gitano just does not have at all.
This means you shouldn’t invest in her at all. She is a desire only unit, and even 4★ only players very rarely, if ever, use her. If you do like her though, both skills are options, but you’ll probably want to start with S2. It has a better effect and the True AoE attack on a wider area is her one vaguely unique niche. However, the cycle time is horrific, so despite being a generic skill, you may get some value out of her S1 too if you really want her to be on every single team.